Flickers
by pheromones
Summary: How can you fix something when you yourself are already beyond repair?


**Leave me out with the waste**  
><strong>This is not what I do<strong>  
><strong>It's the wrong kind of place<strong>  
><strong>To be thinking of you<strong>  
><strong>It's the wrong time<strong>  
><strong>For somebody new<strong>  
><strong>It's a small crime<strong>  
><strong>And I've got no excuse<strong>

**Damien Rice, '9 Crimes'**

The dress was draped on the back of her desk chair; all aged off white lace, moth eaten satin, loose beading, and yet still alive enough to give Violet the stare down as she laid on her stomach, smoking a Marlboro in an attempt at her best Mia Wallace impression (Save for the OD-ing, which had already checked off her list). It was a beautiful dress, long and old from the 1920s belonging to poor, beautiful Nora Montgomery that she probably wore about the house while directing girls to the basement for their abortions. Back when a woman's wardrobe was limited to dresses and skirts, Nora's dress found itself at dinner parties, swishing along to the Charleston, dropping to the ground as her husband brought her to bed, and performing various other duties required of Roaring Twenties female clothing. One day, Nora probably sat by the fire place in that dress, contemplating her decaying life in the house Charles had built for her, smoking and taking swigs of bootleg liquor between sobs. The fabric still held the memories of tears, dead babies, drugs, and more of everyone's favorite things.

Violet had found the dress lying on her unmade bed as she walked into her room after her first day back at shitty Westfield High School, throwing her backpack across the room upon sighting the new addition to her wardrobe. There was a little note on top of the skirt:

_Violet,_

_Found this up in the attic. It belonged to Nora Montgomery but it's sadly not the one she shot herself and her husband in. That would've been pretty fucking awesome to find._

_Meet me in the basement after your father leaves. Wear this. I think you'll look beautiful in it. We're going to have some fun tonight._

_TAINT __Tate_

Violet had scoffed at it at first, not because she didn't find Tate's surprise unworthy but because she found his attempt to woo her quite amusing in the sense that it was pretty goddamn schmaltzy and old Hollywood-ish. But he was right; the dress was beautiful, although frayed and dusty from living up in that fucking attic for the past eighty years. It was nearing six, and her father would be leaving to talk to the doctors who were treating Vivien at the mad house within the next five minutes. To be honest, Violet didn't know how to feel about the way her family was falling apart. There was a burden of guilt for lying weighing on her shoulders that wanted to drag her to the bottom of the apathetic sea. But at the same time, Tate has his hand wrapped around her arm to keep her from drifting away from him. She was caught in some kind of tragic Shakespearean emotional limbo of guilt and love. Lie for the boy she loved or tell the truth for the mother she couldn't stand. She still couldn't stand her mother and her band-aid pregnancy, but there were mixed feelings about whether she made the right choice in claiming Vivien was batshit insane. But teenaged love is a straightjacket on the mind, taking a hold of naivety and throwing it into a padded room to have shotty medication shoved down its throat. What critical thinking Violet did have left she used to debate that decision in her subconscious, and it was gnawing at the back of her head. But her heart screamed Tate, Tate, Tate, TATE. People were right, the brain and heart really can't agree.

Violet took another long drag from her cigarette. She and Tate hadn't had the opportunity to 'get busy' all week and it was agony. After finally having pretty fulfilling sex, Tate was on her mind even more often than before. There had been plenty of steamy kisses between them, but her body ached for his fingers and cock to touch her again, although she was smug about the way she acknowledged it. When they couldn't lock lips or slip hands under each other's shirts, Tate always found a way to let Violet know he was still around, like leaving a little daisy on her pillow or writing things on her chalkboard (the latest chalkboard musing was a friendly reminder for Violet not to cut herself). He was pretty sweet, not a fuck and go kind of guy, hmm, ghost, uh, whatever, nevermind.

Violet recalled what he had told her in the attic a couple of weeks ago, that if she told the ghosts to 'Go away', then they would. Why hadn't she whispered the phrase under her breath when she and Vivien found themselves in the car with the ghosts of those two nutty cult members who broke in? It would've saved for a lot shit load of troubled. But hindsight was useless in any situation. What if Violet told Tate to 'Go away'? Would he disappear? Sure, Tate already had the ability to appear behind corners, vanish from the darkness, and bypass locked doors, but Tate wasn't the same as all the other lost souls the house contained.

The cigarette was starting to burn at the filter, only allowing for one more decent drag before Violet would be sucking in ash. She took the final inhale, attempting to fill her senses with as much of that intoxicating smoke as humanly possible, and blew it out a'la Mr. Caterpillar with his sweet-ass hookah style. The smoke rose to the ceiling and dissipated like the happiness of two miserable people in an equally miserable marriage. Violet contemplated pulling out another cigarette, but the sounds of Ben shouting, "Don't destroy the house Vi, I'll be back in an hour or two!" and the front door slamming shut made her reconsider the urge.

Violet took another long look at Nora's dress as she flicked the cigarette butt across the room, missing the trash barrel by about five feet. "Let's get this party started I guess…"

The dress was a pretty good fit, although she didn't fill the bust area out as well as its previous owner did. The dip into the chest just revealed the flat tops of her small breasts, and had she been a couple cup sizes larger, the dress would've made her a knockout. It was pretty nonetheless, with ivory beading across the bustier and long, lacy sleeves that draped past her thumbs. The skirt, satin with a mix of lace and beading, skimmed the floor, giving the illusion she was floating or walking on water. A dress like this would still run in the hundreds of dollars today, give or take some due to all the frayed edges and missing beads. Courtney Love could easily have rocked the dress back in the grunge era without a problem. Old things were beautiful to Violet, which was why she preferred flea markets and thrift stores to malls and Rodeo Drive.

She trekked down the stairs after deeming herself satisfied with the fit of the dress, careful of her Converse not to step on the too long fabric that would result in a rather painful fall down the stairs. The house was quiet, save for the sound of her sneakers squeaking along the hardwood floor. Moira must have left along with Ben she supposed. Good, less of a chance of her getting caught with Tate's hand up her, uh, Nora's, dress. Wonder if getting fingered in a dead woman's dress was considered offensive to ghosts? Probably. Well in that case she was going to be fucked in every sense of the word.

The basement still sent little shivers down Violet's spine. She still hated having to go into the basement after that ghost flash mob drove her to down thirty prescription pills. The basement was more or less the rec room for all the departed spirits the house ate. At least she now had the ability to make them 'Go away', which gave her back her original sense of courageous intrigue towards the Murder House. As long as the ghosts couldn't hurt her, there was no immediate danger. As long as Tate was there by her side, nothing would try to claw her organs out from the nice confines of her body.

"Tate?" Violet called out as she reached the bottom of the creaky basement stairs. Fuck, it was cold down there. Thank God the bustier was too loose around her chest, or Tate would get quite the peep show. She took a few steps forward to flick on the light switch, a bit apprehensive if any ghoul decided to get up in her face and make her pee all over some dead woman's dress. "Could you at least turn the light on, jerk?"

As brave as Violet had prepared herself to be, she nearly jumped out of skin when she saw Tate rocking back and forth in that creepy ass rocking chair like a senile old pervert. His face broke out into that irritating delinquent grin upon seeing her clamber against the cement wall in fear. Tate couldn't help himself. He had been diagnosed as bipolar at some point in his life; at least he thought so, as he was diagnosed with so many fucking things.

"Scared ya this time," Tate gave Violet a quick look over from head to toe, noticing she had obeyed his directions. "You look ravishing darling." His imitation of a British accent was pretty piss poor.

Violet held her hand to her rapidly beating heart before stomping over to whack Tate in the shoulder with a closed fist. "Yeah, go fuck yourself." He only giggled maniacally before pulling the girl into his lap, who was all steam coming out the ears and furrowed brows of annoyance like a Looney Toon. She was so cute, even with her little face all scrunched up with fury whilst trying to knock the wind from his lungs with her beating fists. He had seen puppies more aggressive looking.

The protests stopped as soon as Tate's hand took a firm squeeze of the junction where hip met thigh and planted a big smooch onto Violet's burning cheek, causing her to huff out a hot breath and lower those beating fists. She turned and gave him that look in her eyes that curdled milk, but the expression became somewhat more amused as Tate began rocking in the chair again.

"The dress looks beautiful." He pulled the fabric of the skirt into his hand, rubbing the material between his fingers in a teasing manner.

"I don't have the right tits for it. But yeah, I can totally see myself sacrificing virgins and shit in this." Or having weird Frankenstein babies, whatever comes first.

Tate reached up and pulled the bustier back to get a peek at Violet's very bare breasts. "So you're going braless now? What am I to do with you Violet?" He gave another maniacal laugh as Violet slapped his inquiring hand away from her chest. "Feisty today, are we?"

"Can it Tate," She pushed his smug face away with her palm, which she probably should have licked if he was going to act like a ten year old. "Just because you've handled my boobs doesn't make them your property." Violet adjusted herself on his lap, fixing the skirt of the dress, as it was getting twisted around her legs. "So, what's this I hear about 'fun' tonight?"

Tate pushed his feet off the ground to make the chair rock again. "You know, fuck with ghosts, pray to Satan, kill a few animals…" His girlfriend smirked in response and continued to finger the beading on the bustier. "Or we could pop open your parent's liquor cabinet, put on some Kurt Cobain, and engage in sexual relations?"

Violet breathed a laugh. "You sure you don't want to read some of that gay porn?" She pouted her lips at him. Those full, kissable, lovely lips that Tate just wanted to corrupt and violate. Huh, they'd completely skipped all the cock play and dove into the sex. He'd have to fix that eventually, but at the moment he was hungry for Violet. Tate B had found Nora's dress and thought Violet would look beautiful in it. Tate A thought the dress would look even better on the floor, staring at him as he fucked Violet over the Doctor's sofa like an animal.

"Tempting, but instead of reading all that smut, why don't we go read up on your father's patient files? We can see just how good of a shrink the old Doctor really is. Plus, I want to see what he's been writing about me." Tate's face became mischievous as he threw the bait out. He had always imagined having his way with Violet in Ben's office since the day he met her. He would have visions of himself pounding in and out of her on the desk, licking her pussy on the armchair, and just flat out defiling the good Doctor's little girl in every corner of the room.

Violet considered the offer for a moment. Sure, her father was about as emotionally incompetent as the average statue and couldn't keep his dick in his pants but did he really deserve to have two obnoxious teenagers digging through his professional life, a.k.a. the only area he hadn't completely fucked over yet? The short answer to this was a resounding yes. Sure, Violet felt a teensy bit bad, but the majority of her conscious told the minority to sit down and please shut the fuck up.

"We've got about two hours to spare. Just don't leave anything out of place or you'll be in a load of trouble." Violet wiggled herself off of Tate's lap in order to take him up on the suggestion for their date night. Sit in a fancy dress and read about the lives of various the psychotics (and Tate) her father treated? That sounded like it could be her new favorite hobby.

Tate stayed seated for a second to admire the way Nora's dress looked from the back wrapped around Violet's figure. Yes, two hours would be plenty of time to satisfy his naughty needs.

"Woah, I didn't know my Dad worked with so many goddamn weirdoes. He treats enough people to start his own bullshit Maury Povich talk show," Violet fingered out a sheet of paper from the stack of files in her lap. "Listen to this, 'Patient displays a strong, anxiety attack provoking fear of the obese', guess someone doesn't like going to Denny's…" She handed the document over to Tate, who was lying languidly on the leather sofa with a similar stack of files resting upon his stomach. Violet turned back to flip through more of the files she had taken out of the desk drawer, having reached patients who Ben treated back in Boston with crippling fears.

Tate chuckled childishly as he read through Ben's written notes on the fatass-o-phobic patient. "Your dad actually took him to a McDonalds and the guy pissed his pants! Man, that's fucking priceless." Poor Ben, he probably cried when the full grown man emptied his bladder in front of the Playland at the sight of all those whales stuffing their faces. How hilarious, and if you had the same twisted taste in humor that Tate had, it was the funniest thing in the world besides scaring coke whores to death.

He looked over at Violet, draped across the arm chair in that downright sinful looking dress. So what if she was wearing her Converse with it? In his opinion, it only made the look sexier, because wearing sneakers with a fancy dress was something exclusively Violet Harmon. She was as cool as sin, and oh the sins he wanted to commit with her. The way her collar bone jutted out against her ivory skin in contrast to the cream color of the dress just made his head spin. He could hardly wait to sink his teeth into her, and this time, he wouldn't be gentle. However, Tate wanted to finish snooping through the Doctor's professional life. It was giving him an intrigue boner.

"Find anything equally entertaining?" Violet asked as she continued to sort through the stack of the manic depressives, the anxiety prone, the delusional, and the downright psychotic.

Tate looked at some of the files he set aside, having found them only interesting enough in comparison to the general failures his stack had contained "Just a guy with a phobia of urban legends and a lady who memorized the names of football teams to save her marriage…" Those two could probably hit it off and have a really pathetic romance. He continued to thumb through the different documents in hopes of finding his own or more prime examples of the world's weirdoes.

However, it was Violet who stumbled across the stapled papers marked 'Tate Langdon'.

It looked like all the other patient files: an assessment sheet with basic information, a record of his appointments with her father, and a paper of hand written notes. The little voice in Violet's head told her she should tell Tate that she found her father's file on him, but the curiosity was just too strong. She needed to take a good look at it first. After all, she was still in the dark when it came to Tate over a lot of things, well, besides the fact that he shot up Westfield High School seventeen years ago and committed suicide by cop. Oh yeah, and Constance was his mother. All she really knew about Tate was the crazy ghost shit and what he wanted her to know. Now what about what her father knew? Was there another dimension to Tate as she had been contemplating over?

The assessment sheet was simple, like all the other patient documents. There was Tate's name, his guardian's name, his age (seventeen forever), his address, and the medications he was taking as well as the dosages. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Tate was taking Lexipro, a common anti-depressant, although she wasn't sure if it worked on the dead.

Violet turned the page as discreetly as possible to avoid alerting Tate that she was reading something interesting, which he would correctly assume was his file. It was the date sheet. Yup, nothing too interesting, just that her father saw Tate on average about once a week, sometimes twice, which she already knew. Moving on.

It was the sheet of her father's handwritten notes that sparked her interest.

_Patient spoke about violent fantasies, particularly about committing murder. 'Prepare for the noble war'. 'No one can stop me including myself'. States that in these fantasies, he kills the people he likes, for which he shows no sympathy, as he feels he is taking them to a better place by killing them. Pessimistic view of the world. Clearly mentally disturbed. Fixated on carnage. Possible emotional trauma as a child, as patient identifies his mother as a 'cocksucker' and claims his father abandoned him. Rage. Psychotic. _

All that alone was from the first session. Okay, Tate clearly wasn't just some kid with a common case of teen angst. This didn't sound like the Tate she knew. Sure, he had moments where he was quote un-quote off his goddamn rocker, but for the most part Tate had been sweet and kind. Constance said that the darkness of the house drove him to shoot all those kids back in 1994. He committed suicide by cop. All that could be explained by the influence of Murder House, but the Tate she knew was more like the boy draping his arm around his sister Addie in the picture Constance had showed her. Smiling and gentle to those he loved, the Tate he used to be before all the blood and carnage of the house had taken a hold of him. Violent fantasies? That was new. Tate occasionally talked about how much he hated the high school her forgot he shot up and he did have some twisted ideas of how to scare people. But never before had he mentioned any violent fantasies, let alone any thoughts of killing people. There were moments when she looked at him and for second glimpsed at the troubled soul behind the beautiful ghostly face. Tate had always had a disturbing edge, but it was just now that Violet realized it was more of a fucking sidewalk than an edge.

She remembered the way Tate stood in the threshold of the bathroom door, watching casually as she made a fresh cut into her forearm with the razor. He had told her she was doing it wrong with sick fascination. _They can't stitch that up_. Only psychos told people which way to cut to end it all. And he had smiled, he had smiled at her when he closed the bathroom door. There was something in his eyes that had sent her heart pounding against her ribcage, with intrigue or alarm, she wasn't sure. Violet saw the tip of the iceberg then. She wasn't completely sure if she wanted to continue exploring what lay under the surface.

She looked at the second set of notes from Tate's second session with her father.

_Lied to me about taking Lexipro. Showed the desire to get better. Possibly scared of rejection as a result of father's abandonment. Claimed he stopped taking Lexipro because he was afraid it would make him incompetent, states that he has met someone._

That someone was her. That was the day she and Tate had really met for the first time. It was weird to think it had only been over a month ago that they had crossed paths, or dimensions, or whatever. Tate was wearing that mustard yellow wool sweater that smelled like sandalwood. She remembered because it was the first thing she saw when she had wandered into her living room that afternoon.

_"Hey you!" _

_The boy in the condiment colored pullover turned around from where he stood, admiring the gruesome mural her mother had been uncovering. Violet thought they were pretty cool, with demons eating naked people and stuff. Usually you had to pay a visit to some cannibal's house in Virginia to get a close look at these fine pieces of religious propaganda, not in a three story Victorian home in Los Angeles._

_Violet had been in the middle of looking for her mother. She needed to know if the laundry was done. Her favorite Navajo print sweater was in the wash and she wanted it back on her shoulders. But instead of finding her mother picking off the wallpaper, she had found the psycho boy who spied on her cutting last week. Forget the sweater, she had a bone to pick with this creep._

_The boy, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants, looked her over with a dazed look in his dark eyes. He smiled the same psycho smile he had given her last week, and it only served to infuriate her more. Clearly he was one of her father's new patients, but just because he was mentally unstable didn't give him to right to walk around her house, opening closed doors as if he owned the place. Now he was standing in her living room, looking at her houses' hell mural?_

_"Why the fuck were you spying on me last week?"_

_He shrugged and took a step away from the mural. "I had to take a piss. When you gotta go you gotta go, you know?"_

_Violet stood her ground. She wasn't about to let psycho boy walk all over her. "I don't care how badly you needed to take a piss, this is my house and…"_

_The boy had taken Violet's arm in his hand before she had even realized he was standing mere inches in front of her. _

_"I used to cut myself too," What he said stopped her from tugging her arm out of his grasp. "I used a carving knife and the feeling when it sliced into my wrist just made me feel relieved. I'd watch the blood bubble up and spill down my arm," The boy looked into her eyes, understanding flooding his once smug features and drastically changing his appearance. Violet had met plenty of cutters before, but they were all overweight Hot Topic goth girls looking for attention by pressing plastic knives into their fat arms during lunch. She had never even heard of a guy cutting before, or even thought they existed._

_"You feel like you're floating when the skin finally splits and you realize you're still alive. Suddenly there's so much blood and someone's banging on the door because they need to take a shit. Just like that you're back in reality." He smiled, but this smile was different. It wasn't the smile he gave her as he closed the bathroom door. This was a smile of compassion, something Violet was shit out of these days. Was he actually interested in her? Boys were never interested in her, unless she was in the way of the big boobed bitch they were trying to hit on. As far as Violet knew, boys were just testicles that could talk, lacking any emotions besides lust, rage, and shameless pride. Psycho boy here was throwing sixteen years of observations of the opposite sex out the goddamn window._

_"You're the Doctor's daughter. Kind of ironic," He let go of her arm, which dropped back to her side without much control. "What's your name?"_

_Violet stood mouth agape for a moment before summoning the use of her vocal chords. "Violet."_

_The boy shoved his hands back into the pockets of his pants. "Cool, like the Hole song!"_

_"Y-yeah, I guess." Holy Christ's nuts, a boy who understands the physics of self harm _**_and _**_appreciates the grunge era? Was this kid for real? "What about you, you got a name?"_

_"Tate Langdon."_

_Tate. That was a nice name, it fit him very well. Not many people named their kids Tate after the 1970s. He had the looks to pull the name off, that was for sure. Messy blonde hair that skimmed his eyes in waves, a handsomely shaped face with eyes to match, and a lean figure surfers would envy. He was like the reincarnation of Kurt Cobain, and she was standing there, wide eyed and heart pounding like a regular Courtney Love. _

_Tate flinched, realizing the time and the appointment he had to keep with the good Doctor. "Hey, I gotta go see your father and stuff, but do you maybe wanna hang out after I'm done in there?"_

_It was what Violet had just been thinking. Damn, could this kid read her mind? She snapped out of her daze to reply to his offer. "Sure, my room is the second to the right. Just knock on it or whatever I guess."_

_Tate smiled again, looking very pleased with himself. He nodded at Violet and left her standing idly in the middle of the living room to run off to his therapist appointment. _

There was something in Violet that day that drove her to Tate, like a moth to a flame. He had a charm that could tame shrews and rabid animals. He had spun a web around her, and no matter how hard she struggled against the binds she could not free herself. He had her fully wrapped in his tangled weaving. Violet recalled how he stomped down the stairs screaming after her father told him to leave. It was clear he was a mentally unstable ghost when she replayed the memory in her head, his personality swinging at the drop of a hat as he made his grand exit. Maybe the Tate her father was describing had always been there; she had just been to enamored to notice the flaws.

Violet read on.

_Spoke of wanting to engage in graphic sexual relations with Violet. Clearly mentally disturbed, turning to thoughts of sex and violence in times of weakness. Will act on these feelings if left unchecked. Clear personality disorder. Needs to get a rise out of people. Tendency to self harm. Hallucinations and creation of a fantasy world. Abandonment issues. Thoughts of violence and the desire to act on these thoughts. Pessimistic outlook. Can't recall certain events in detail. Compulsive lying. Identity disturbance. Paranoia and difficulty controlling anger. Diagnosis: Psychosis as a result of Dissociative Identity Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. Patient cannot be treated by me anymore. _

Violet sat mouth agape as she stared at her father's scrawl. Oh shit. Oh dear. But no, it couldn't be. He father was a shit therapist! He couldn't even pull his head out of his ass long enough to realize she was on the grand voyage of depression or that his wife was eating raw brains. Tate was certainly unstable, so she wasn't too surprised he talked about wanting to fuck her in order to get a rise out of her father. But what about all the other stuff? Sure, being dead would probably cause a person to be somewhat mad as a hatter, but this Tate sounded more like a sociopath than the boy who held her in her sleep and gave her black roses. And what the fuck did 'will act upon those fantasies if left unchecked' mean? Ok, there was the time when he sent that…monster baby thing in the basement to tear Leah a new mouth in her cheek, but Tate was only trying to scare her, not kill her. Tate didn't even know that thing had attacked her, so he didn't necessarily mean any of the foul that had happened. Besides, he made up for the mistake by saving her and her mother from those creeps who broke in, two of whom were now dead and haunting the place. Oops, maybe Tate didn't do as good of a job with that as she originally thought.

What really scared Violet was that she had no idea of the extent of Tate's issues. This wasn't some Holden Caulfield bullshit description. Instead of the heartbreak for her boyfriend's troubles that she had expected experience, she felt her stomach drop. She tried digging herself out of the rude wake-up call with reasoning that her father was a crock of a psychiatrist. Dad has his head too far up his ass, right? But then Violet realized that when it came to dead teenagers, anything could be true, especially in this house.

What the hell kind of boy did she lose her virginity to?

"What have you got there Vi?"

Violet jumped at the sound of Tate's voice, crumpling the sides of the observation sheet as her hands closed into frightened fists. He was standing right behind her, looking down at the piece of paper she had been so engaged in with an unreadable expression set across his face. He certainly wasn't smiling though.

"I-I…uh…" Violet tried to talk, but her tongue was just useless muscle and her mind couldn't seem to comprehend the English language. All she could do was stare dumbly up at Tate, right into those dark eyes that suddenly scared the living shit out of her.

Tate knelt down and rested his chin on Violet's stiff shoulder. Without a word, he plucked the observation sheet from her hands and held it close to his face to skim through. Violet realized her heart was pounding in her ears, a loud ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump that distracted her from breathing.

Her brain told her limbs to move and get the fuck out of the room because there was something wrong with Tate being quiet and serious. But her arms and legs were deaf to the mind's flight response, paralyzed with a storm of different emotions towards the situation.

Then Tate laughed. It sounded so much like his usual childish chuckle, lighthearted and smug. Yet the laugh had changed somehow; it now meant impending danger and Violet was playing the part of the helpless prey.

"Pretty fucked up, aren't I?"

Violet sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Where was her sarcasm? Her cutting wit? Her steel backbone? Gone, they were gone and nowhere to be found.

Tate moved to sit down in front of the patent leather chair she was draped in. Violet watched in frozen fear as he ran a hand down her thigh, bunching the fabric of Nora's gown in a fist that she wasn't sure how to feel about.

"You're not scared of me now, are you?"

Violet wanted to believe he had said it with genuine concern at the feeling of her stiff beneath his wandering hand. She wanted to believe that his dark eyes were now shining with the fear that he had done something terribly wrong. That was what it looked like in the literal sense. But her head was corrupted by the realization that there was a whole side of Tate that was a threat. Although he looked distressed at the prospect he had frightened her, that threat lingered in the shadows, ready to take the good Tate's place and deceive her.

The curse on her tongue lifted. "This is some pretty heavy shit Tate." Violet's attempt to put some bite into her words failed miserably. She ended up sounding like a pathetic little girl trying to avoid the time out chair.

Tate's hand closed itself around her stiffened wrist. His face appeared to sink at the realization that her body didn't respond favorably to his touch anymore, a sense of hurt clouding his eyes. "I thought you'd understand Violet. Why are you so scared of everything now?"

Tate leaned in closer, desperate to break through the troubling wall of friction that had been constructed between them. She looked the same as she did looking at that book on birds: cold, distant, strange. He had to keep her by his side, something in him was screaming that he keep her to himself.

Violet's eyes flickered about the room, desperately searching for an appropriate answer to a question that was so fragile to handle. "I'm not scared," Liar. "I just don't like being lied to."

Tate stood up, his fists pressed stiff against his sides. "You think I lied to you?" His voice broke with a sliver of anger, but it was audible enough to send a shiver down Violet's spine. "Maybe I just wanted to keep some things to myself? Is that such a problem?"

She flinched slightly and winced, which seemed to drag Tate back down to Earth. Violet was a strong girl. True she had been going through a ton of shit as of lately, her pregnant mother hauled off to the crazy house and her father being about as useful to her psyche as a loaded gun, but things seemed to have been going fine. They had made love and it didn't hurt. She trusted him enough to unify with their bodies. She lied about the ghosts in order to stay by his side. Didn't she still love him? It appeared as though there was nothing that could hurt them, they were invincible to all the piss the world had to offer. What the hell happened? Did he have to prove himself to her yet again that he was the good guy?

"Tate I…"

"What do I have to do Violet to show you I'm on your side?"

Violet's mouth gaped open slightly, once again lost for words. She wanted to thrash him until he had no more secrets to himself anymore. She wanted to scream and beg he tell her just who the hell he was. She wanted him to realize he was just a crazy dead kid who was stuck in the Murder House for eternity so he could finally tell her what kind of person he was. Who was the real Tate Langdon? Was Tate a lost soul who loved and cared, only committing that horrific school shooting because the house had corrupted him with all of its death and evil? Or was Tate a demon dead-bent on destruction, only using her as a pawn in some sick game he was playing?

Before Violet could mumble an incoherent reply to his question, Tate had moved to stand by her draped legs, a look of desperation playing out on his features. She watched closely as he leaned forward over her knees to stroke her cold cheek with the back of his hand. She made no signs of any physical reaction to the feeling of knuckles against skin, but her head with wailing with the screams of hundreds of furies and consciousnesses, some telling her to be afraid, others telling her to give into the temptation of the flesh.

"I want to show you a fantasy I've always had…" Violet's blood ran cold, her eyes going wide in alarm at the words that had escaped Tate's mouth. Thoughts of guns and knives and other murder weapons danced in her head, blood splattering the walls of her father's office and staining all the patient files that he would know they had gone through. What was Tate doing?

"Please Violet, let me prove to you how much I love you." How, by disemboweling her?

A hand slid into the skirt of Nora's dress, creeping up Violet's stockinged thigh, gentle but so very tempting as it stopped short of her sex.

Tate was so close to her face that her skin was starting to dew with his hot breath. He heart was racing at the close contact in such tension filled moment, unsure of whether he was about to kiss her or kill her.

He leaned in further to press is lips to her ear. "I want to kiss your cunt Violet. Please?"

The chorus of yelling in her head was silenced, the quiet invaded by Tate's whispered confession and the feeling of fingers on her thigh plucking the loose threading of her tights. Tate had rewound the web over Violet's heart, as evident by the heat her body responded with to his offer of cunnilingus. Her mind was unsure, but her heart and body were allied against common sense that said Tate Langdon was dangerous and would kill at the drop of a hat, no matter how gently he had treated her in the past.

There is simply no room for rational thought when the body lusts. Girls who decided to get a good fuck in while a masked madman was wandering the street stalking big breasted girls were greeted to a butcher's knife in their naked backs. The good virgin is not distracted by the temptation of naughty things, and thus has the mind set to be the last girl standing. Violet always thought she would be the one who outsmarted the danger in her own horror movie. But here was the situation standing right between her legs, and she had no choice but to give in. What happened Vi? What has this boy done to you?

She couldn't think of any justification for why she had nodded in consent. She was spellbound by Tate's lethal charm and the disgusting capacity for human love.

Tate's hands moved to grab Violet around the ankles, pulling her towards him so that her hips slid onto the armrest for easier access. He looked at her quietly as he unlaced her Converse, his heart breaking with agony at the disturbing lack of trust in her face. Did he horrify her that much? He knew Violet would manage to stumble upon his patient file at some point and learn just what sort of things her discussed with her father, but her reaction to them just know was not what he had expected. She didn't flinch when those nuts broke into her house and tried to drown her in the bathtub. She didn't shed a tear when the cops hauled her mother off to the asylum. Why was it now that she looked completely lost?

Tate tossed the sneakers to the other side of the room and moved to push the skirt of the gown up. Violet had gone with the purple tights today, their color her namesake and their opaqueness like her demeanor. He ran a gentle hand along her hip once the dress was no long in the way. All she did was look at him with expressionless eyes, silently questioning her faith in him as his fingers tugged at the waistband of her tights.

Violet obediently lifted her hips up as Tate pulled the tights down her hips, past her thighs, and off of her pale legs. The key adjective in the situation was _obediently_, there was no passion or lust in reaction to the removal of clothing as there was when they had sex in her bed. It felt like something they had to do, a required task to reassure their love for each other because things had changed within the last five minutes.

Violet responded when Tate pressed his lips against hers, but her mouth wasn't hungry like his, it was apprehensive and unsure as it opened to let his tongue in. She was responding automatically without any of the emotion that made sexual encounters passionate. Tate wasn't satisfied with any of that, and the way his hands latched onto the elastic band of her frilly underpants showed he wasn't going to have any of her meaningless responses.

The kiss broke as Tate moved back to pull the final barrier between him and his task down. Her underpants stayed looped around one ankle; there was no need to throw them across the room only to lose and have Ben find months later with a look of horror on his face. Violet made no move to cover what was now exposed; she just silently accepted it without complaint or comment. Tate knelt himself down between her hanging legs, running a hand up the inside of her thigh. It was like touching dead skin. Nothing was responding to him as it should be.

"Violet…don't you like it when I touch you?" Tate took a hold of Violet's hand, bringing it to his cheek so that she could feel the honesty in him and stop acting like such a stranger. She looked down at his desperate attempt to stay close to her, situated right between her legs, all set to press open mouthed kissed to her sex. She felt the heartbreak in her chest but didn't want to nurse it back to health. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? To fool around in her asshole father's office with a ghost she didn't want to be separated from? She lied about her mother's sanity for this. And now it was time to sleep in the bed she made for herself, a bed with sheets of lies, pillows of regret, and a comforter of Tate's touch. Violet had to sleep in it, that mattress of fuck ups,

"I'm just worried about my mom." Liar. Lying through your teeth to be touched and loved was so filthy. Here she was on her back, her legs spread open like a French whore, about to be tongue fucked by the ghost of a boy who she just learned was certified clinically psychotic even in the afterlife. Did she even know what she was doing anymore?

Tate wanted to believe her. When had Violet become such a horrendous liar? She used to spin spotless lies out, turning bullshit into believable golden thread. But he was so desperate to bring Violet back to him that he was willing to give her oral sex that was completely meaningless to her. He nodded in acceptance to the poorly fabricated claim and pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee.

Violet kept her hand pressed to his cheek, if only to reassure her bullshit fib and get him to keep pushing her thighs apart. Nothing about the way her looked at her mound felt sexy. Forced was the furthest thing from sexy.

But the feeling of tongue to core was so overwhelming that Violet's apprehensive mind was dragged under the current of sexual pleasure, albeit it felt wrong and sinful. She shook as Tate dragged his tongue from hole to clit, the response he had desperately needed to feel from her since the beginning. She tasted sweet yet tart in his mouth, her wetness slicking up his chin and lips, her aroma intoxicating his senses and sending him over the edge.

Her breath hitched as his tongue found her clit and caressed it, making Violet throw her head back and release a mute scream. Tate was groaning and making the most obscene slurping noises as he spelled his name out across the bundle of nerves, T-A-T-E. The T's felt really good, she wished he had more T's in his name. But there were vowels, and they were torturous flicks of the tongue that didn't satisfy like the T's did.

Tate's hands planted themselves to the insides of Violet's thighs, keeping them pried open as her legs had begun twitching from the sensations his mouth was giving her pussy. He was licking her like a starved animal cleaning meat off the bones, and although the taste of her juices wasn't one he would exactly like to bottle and drink with a nice steak, the situation made it seem delectable on his tongue. And the way her smell and heat splashed across his face brought out something terrible in him that wanted to take control. His tongue became more adventurous, slipping down to trace the hole his dick had opened up days ago, a hole meant for him and no one else. His teeth pushed up against her clit, roughly kneading the nub with pressure and sending Violet's hands into his hair. Her whimpered moans reached his ears after about a minute of this torturous teasing, and he finally gave in to the animalistic desire.

Tate's tongue finally entered her, roughly shoving past sensitive, wet walls and choosing to fuck. Violet's eyes fixated themselves on the office ceiling, she couldn't stand to look at Tate's head anymore, she just felt shameful. Her body had betrayed her, bucking up into his warm mouth for more of that delicious contact, the feeling of his tongue tickling her swollen clit so insanely addictive. _The devil can be beautiful_. Leah may be some pretentious coke slut, but she was right. The words repeated themselves in her ears amongst the raunchy noises Tate was making between her legs and Violet realized just how right she was. What better way to get humanity to do its bidding than through Godly looks?

Then, Violet felt the edges of teeth pressing into her sex.

She looked down, despite all the screaming in her head telling her to close her eyes and imagine herself elsewhere. Her hand was no longer threaded through soft tufts of dirty blonde hair, but plastered against shiny black latex. The eyes staring up at her were not those dark brown ones that were always gentle, but cold and black like the gimp mask encasing the wearer's head. The tongue in her cunt was now frenzied and forceful, nothing like how it felt before.

Violet could only watch in horror as the man in rubber continued to feast upon her, her mind too arrested by the insane amount of pleasure the stranger's tongue was giving. There was no way she could summon a scream, no way to command her mouth to form the shapes to say 'stop', no way she could pull herself away from the blissful heat that had numbed her limbs so that she could get up and run. She was the prey now, the poor helpless prey about to be eaten alive for the predator's content.

The tongue removed itself and went straight to long, languid licks, dragging slowly and torturously. Then the teeth came back to nibble on her clit, which the tongue poked and prodded causing a dull, pleasurable pain to burst along her spine. There was no sign of Tate anywhere in the ministrations, he was gone and replaced by whoever it was behind the latex mask. Those teeth and tongue weren't gentle and loving, but demanding and starving, waiting to bite down and draw blood from the ripped flesh. Flashes of pain and images of her mutilated privates filled her head. The rubberman had moved on to violating her mind, sending visions of carnage and destruction that tortured her sanity.

Tears began to build up in Violet's eyes. They were tears of frustration, anguish, fright, and sickening pleasure. It hurt so good, the intensity was past the level of comfort, like the rubbing of salt into a freshly opened wound. There was nothing left to salvage, all the pieces were falling from her bones and the flesh was ready to be consumed by the demon in the gimp suit, whose tongue felt inhumanly long and snakelike as it dipped back into her pussy hole. The house finally had her in its hold; the rubberman taking the form of the angst ridden lost soul of Tate Langdon who served as the messenger for all the evil that the Victiorian home had manifested in its walls. It was the tongue of evil that sent Violet over the edge and into a blinding climax. Nora Montgomery's dress became soiled with the horrendous orgasm, joining the memories of dead babies, drug addiction, murder, and sin in the fabric.

When Violet's vision finally returned, the horrible man in the gimp suit was gone without a trace but for the nightmarish orgasm she had fallen from. Tate was back with his sad looking eyes and boyish good looks. His fingers were already there to brush the tears from her eyes, his lips moving to murmur "I love you"s that only made Violet cry harder.

Nothing was fixed. Another crime had been committed in this house of the Devil. There were no excuses for the vision of latex, the hateful orgasm, or the abundance of lies. Violet didn't know who Tate Langdon was. She never did know, actually. And as he wrapped his arms around her neck and planted an assault of loving kisses across her face, the sinking feeling of helplessness smothered her. Tate, on the other hand, felt the horrid pang of failure in his heart. Nothing good could ever stay. Life was unpredictable. He felt as if he were rotting away. Who was he? There were so many blanks in his mind, so many holes that time should've filled, so many questions he couldn't answer. He was ignorant to the evil that had used him as its playing piece, ignorant to the sins he had committed, ignorant to the stranger that shared his body alongside him. How can you fix something when you yourself are already beyond repair?

The house was silent but for Violet's sobs and Tate's hopeless whispers in the girl's ear. His patient file sat lonely on the ground, still open to all of those terrible notes that had stomped all over Violet's heart. The ghosts looked on, laughing and enjoying the spectacle of misery. Nobody in this house deserved to be happy when everyone was dead and miserable. This house of dead babies and blood on the walls and adultery and failure.

How fucking tragic.

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

This started out as a sequel to 'Limp'...and then episode 8 came out and fucked it all up.

I don't think I'll be able to write Violate the same way again.

Here's the playlist, a lot of instrumental tracks this time:

**Flickers by Son Lux**

**Opposites Attract by Clint Mansell (From Black Swan)**

**9 Crimes by Damien Rice (Original and Hidden Track Version)**

**O Children by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds**

**Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell (From Requiem for a Dream)**

**Dread on Arrival by Michael Giacchino (From Let Me In)**

**Visitation Rights by Michael Giacchino (From Let Me In)**

**Night of Terror by Clint Mansell (From Black Swan)**

**Parting Sorrows by Micahel Giacchino (From Let Me In)**

And here's some clarification on my own personal theory about just who Tate is:

The Three Tates

Tate 1, Tate 2, and Tate 3

Tates 1 and 2 are merely two distinctive behaviors of the same personality formerly known as Tates A and B.

Tates 1 and 2 are the real Tate, with 1 being the Tate who was alive pre-darkness.

1 is childlike, innocent, gentle, and caring, usually seen around Violet. This Tate rescued her from overdosing and promised he would never hurt her. Has morals and acts nobely, as seen in the Halloween episodes. Will do anything to protect Violet, even if it means leaving her alone. This is the Tate that can be seen in the picture with Addie.

2 is somewhat darker. This Tate is the troubled, teenage Tate. However, this Tate also holds compassion for Violet and will do anything to protect her, albeit through less convensional ways like chopping a woman in half. The problem is, this Tate is more easily influenced by Tate 3 and the darkness of the house, so Tate 2 sees visions of carnage and destruction, rather emotionally 1 and 2 do not know they are dead. These Tates have little knowledge of Tate 3.

Tate 3 is a split personality, known as Rubberman. This Tate acts upon violent tendencies and basic human desires. This is the Tate who shot up Westfield and raped Vivien. Tate 3 is completely under the house's influence and has no idea that what he is doing is wrong, as he finds a way to justify his actions (raping Vivien in order to give Nora her baby). Tate 3 knows he is dead and influences the actions of the other personality (Telling that personality to convince Violet to lie about seeing ghosts, thus getting Vivien locked away). Likewise, there is also some amount of influence on Tate 3 by the other personality, as seen in the basement scene between with Hayden. This is the real ghost Tate.

Tates 1 and 2 only emerged when he began receiving therapy from Ben and when he met Violet. In other words, Violet brings out the true Tate, the best in him if you want to call it that.


End file.
